Joseph Alleine
10
JOSEPH ALLEINE
Elizabeth Braund
In June, 1669, Archbishop Sheldon directed that returns should be made of all Nonconformist Conventicles known to be held in the various Dioceses of Canterbury.
This followed directly upon several years of bitter persecution of nonconformists under the so-called Clarendon Code. These persecuting laws in the main consisted of four statutes. The terms of the 1661 Corporation Act excluded from municipal office all but Royalist Anglicans. In 1662 the Act of Uniformity led to the ejection of Puritan ministers, traditionally estimated as some 2,000. The Conventicle Act, passed in 1663, stipulated that not more than five adults might meet for any religious purpose “in other manner than as allowed by the liturgy” under pain of heavy fines, imprisonment, or even transportation. This was followed in October, 1665, by the Five Mile Act, imposing more stringently than ever an oath of non-resistance and passive obedience on ejected ministers. Those who refused it were forbidden to come within five miles of any corporate town, except to pass through it, or any place where they had previously ministered—thus exiling them to remote country districts.
It is true that in 1667 the Conventicle Act expired, but this led rather to confusion than to much relief for nonconformists, since the Conventicle Act of Queen Elizabeth’s reign was still on the Statute Book, and other existing laws could be—and were—invoked at will.
This then was the background to the situation in which the 1669 returns were made to Archbishop Sheldon. They show plainly that far from dissent having been crushed out of existence, as had been the penal laws’ design, in many areas conventicles were numerous and large. One such area was the Archdeaconry of Taunton in Somerset, where forty of the seventy-three Somerset ministers ejected in 1662 were still preaching in the county despite the persecuting laws. Moreover they had been joined by sixteen other ejected ministers from the neighboring counties, and a careful study of the returns further indicates that these men were organized in preaching bands with regular circuits. What the returns do not record is the name of the man who more than all the others was responsible for this state of affairs. For in November, 1668, Joseph Alleine had died at the early age of 34.
Today Alleine is probably best known (where he is known at all) as the author of An Alarme To The Unconverted—or To Unconverted Sinners,1 of which Calamy wrote in 1702: “Multitudes will have cause for ever to be thankful for it.” The first edition in 1672 sold 20,000 copies, and when it was reprinted three years later under the title of A Sure Guide To Heaven,2 50,000 were sold. According to Emanuel Green’s bibliography of Alleine’s Works, eight editions of the Alarme appeared before 1700, and four more under the title A Sure Guide to Heaven. At least fourteen editions appeared in the eighteenth century, and eleven or more in the nineteenth century.
For all its subsequent popularity, however, it was not for this book that Alleine was famous during his lifetime or in the years immediately after his death. He was known to his contemporaries first and foremost as a man of outstanding godliness and zeal for the Lord, whose ministry was exceptionally used of God in his lifetime.
In this paper I shall try to present some picture of the man himself and his ministry in the midst of one of the most varied and at times difficult periods that Christians have lived through in this country. In particular, I shall look at the years of Alleine’s nonconformity, since it was in this brief period (six years in all) that his gifts were most extensively used and his ministry most widely felt.
The main sources of material are Joseph Alleine’s own works, though I shall not refer directly to the Alarme since it is easily available; other contemporary writings; and documents in the Record Office, Lambeth Palace Library, Taunton Castle, and Taunton and Somerset Archives.
Alleine’s Childhood and Student Days
He was born early in 1634, a year after Laud became Archbishop of Canterbury and set about his rigorous policies of insisting upon absolute conformity of the clergy to the Prayer Book, of reintroducing certain practices in the worship of the Church which had been abolished at the Reformation, and of doing all that he could to put an end to Puritanism. By the time Alleine was old enough to enter the ministry the vital religious principles at stake in the ’30s, which literally became life and death issues in the ’40s, had been resolved—at least for the moment—by the triumph of the Parliamentary and Puritan causes. The period of his childhood thus coincided with years of cataclysmic changes in the life of the nation. But, except in a general sense, he was too young at the time fully to enter into the issues at stake, and while the storm clouds gathered, and broke over the nation, the horizon of Alleine’s life was largely bounded by his home.
This was in Devizes in Wiltshire where his father Tobie Alleine was a Cersey weaver, who ran his own small business and supplemented his income by taking over the tenancy of the market house where he was responsible for weighing wool and yarn. But throughout the ’30s and ’40s trade was depressed and Tobie Alleine was more than once in financial difficulties. If the Alleine family was not wealthy, however, it was respected, and by 1640 Tobie Alleine was one of the town’s Chief Burgesses and the word gent was beginning to be added after his name.
He is described by his cousin, a Puritan minister, as “an outstanding affectionate, prudent and signally humble and experienced Christian.” He and his wife ordered their family life in typical Puritan manner, and for Joseph, a sensitive little boy with a lively imagination, this meant that no matter how great the upheavals going on in national life, he had the basic security of a home in which there was cohesion and order, resulting from the whole of life, in all its aspects, being viewed as under the Sovereignty of God, and regulated according to His Word.
It was a disciplined but happy home, and like other Puritan fathers, Tobie Alleine superintended his sons’ spiritual knowledge, and also encouraged their general education. He soon discovered that Joseph was not only intelligent but that he loved learning, and while the other children played, he was usually to be found deep in a book, oblivious to all that was going on around him. His power of concentration was unusual in so young a child, and augured well for his future schooling. But the outbreak of war when he was only eight disrupted ordinary life in Devizes and for the next three or four years whatever schooling was possible was only carried on in the most distracting circumstances.
Initially, Devizes was held for Parliament, but early the next year the town fell to the Royalists. Heavy fines were levied, goods were commandeered, the town’s ordinary government was dislocated, and for several years trade was almost at a standstill. Like most cloth-workers, Tobie Alleine suffered substantial business losses during the war, and the last year of it brought an even greater loss to the family with the death of the eldest son, who had lately become a Presbyterian minister. His death made a profound impression on Joseph, then eleven years old; the more so because it came shortly after a turning point in his own spiritual experience. His family had lately begun to notice that he was “very diligent in private prayer and so fixed in that duty that he would not be disturbed or moved by the coming of any person accidentally in the place of his retirement.” This and “other traits of a serious and gracious spirit” convinced his parents that he had come to a vital and personal knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ as his Savior and Lord. A further effect of his conversion followed his brother’s death, in that he now “earnestly desired to be brought up with a view to succeeding him in the work of the ministry.” With characteristic singleness and strength of purpose, in spite of the difficulties of the time, Alleine was never to falter from that aim.
His desire was furthered in 1646, when plague broke out in Devizes and Tobie Alleine moved his family to the village of Poulshott, a few miles away. The rector of the village was William Spinage, a Puritan and a scholar who had attracted a number of young men to live at the Rectory and study there prior to going to the University. In this company Alleine was able to continue his studies to such good effect that in 1649, when he was sixteen, he was awarded a place at Lincoln College, Oxford. Accordingly at the beginning of the Hilary term he set out along the Download road for Oxford: a well-built handsome youth whose intellectual ability and serious Christian desires were already united in one ambition—to be a worthy minister of the gospel.
Oxford, under the Commonwealth, was admirably suited to Alleine’s purpose. Matthew Henry, writing of his father who was a contemporary of Alleine’s at the University, recalls that he would “often mention with thankfulness to God, what great helps and advantages he had there in the University, not only for learning but for religion and piety. Serious godliness was in reputation and beside the public opportunities they had, there were many of the scholars that would meet together for prayer and Christian conference to the great confirming of one another’s hearts in the fear and love of God and the preparing of them for the service of God in their generation.”
When Alleine first arrived at the University, life there was just beginning to settle down after the upheavals of the past years. The Royalist Heads of Colleges, who for two years had defied the authority of the Parliamentary Commission sent to restore order, had at last been ejected and that intrepid squatter, Mrs. Fell, wife of the Vice-Chancellor, had been carried from the Deanery which she had refused to leave.
The new Heads of Colleges numbered many able scholars, and from 1650 when Cromwell became Chancellor and John Owen an energetic Vice-Chancellor, a vigorous constructive policy was pursued which caused even the Royalist Clarendon to observe that it “yielded a harvest of extraordinary good and sound knowledge in all parts of learning.”
In such an environment Alleine’s lively mind was stimulated and he began to show considerable versatility. He developed a keen interest in anatomy and some skill in scientific experiment. He became competent in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, and made a special study of Natural Theology. He also took a lively part in debates, showing ability in presenting his case clearly.
But with so much to interest and stimulate him, Alleine was not deflected from his main purpose of studying for the ministry. He shared the Presbyterian emphasis upon academic studies as part of his preparation, and regarded some intellectual capacity as an essential mark of a minister’s calling. But natural gifts had to be kept in their rightful place, in subordination to the Word and the Spirit of God, and even as a student it was obvious that Alleine’s chief concern was not with head knowledge. It was said of him that he seemed “to set God always before him and, wherever he was, laboured to live as in His presence.” He once advised another student, “Study God and study yourself closely, and pursue holiness more than learning, though both these together make a happy constellation.”
It was undoubtedly Alleine’s desire for spiritual growth, as well as for biblical teaching, that caused him after a year to move from Lincoln College to Corpus Christi. Even at such a time Corpus had a reputation for an unusual degree of piety. This was mainly due to its President, Dr. Edmund Staunton, who was to exercise a strong influence over Alleine’s future development. A Presbyterian divine and a member of the Westminster Assembly, Staunton was a noted biblical scholar—once described as “a walking concordance.” But he was also, and pre-eminently, a man of personal godliness and of prayer. He was, wrote a friend, “the most praying Christian that ever I was acquainted with.”
At Corpus, Staunton’s great concern was that good scholarship should go hand in hand with piety, and one of the Fellows of the College at this time has left an illuminating glimpse of the life which Alleine found there. Staunton, he writes, “set up a divinity lecture every Lord’s Day early in the morning in the College Chapel, for the initiating and exercising the elder students in order to the work of the Ministry. He constantly catechized the younger sort publicly in the chapel every Saturday. . . . He preached once or twice every Lord’s Day and had every week a meeting at his own lodgings for prayer and spiritual conference, as well for the members of the College as others, when he himself always bore the principal part. . . . He was constantly present in public duties of worship in the chapel morning and evening, observing all and reproving any that were negligent or remiss.”
In this atmosphere Alleine threw himself into his studies and imposed a strict self-discipline, which he was to retain for the rest of his life. It is at least questionable whether the rigorous routine he followed at Oxford, though it appeared to do no harm at the time, may have begun a process which was to wear out his body ahead of time. However that may be, what does emerge clearly is the wholeheartedness with which he sought to prepare for his future ministry. Details of his daily routine at this time emerge from a letter he wrote later, after his marriage, to a college friend who had jokingly asked for an account before changing his own state. “You would know the inconveniences of a wife,” Alleine replied, “And I will tell you. First of all, whereas you used to rise constantly at 4 in the morning or before, she will keep you till about 6. Secondly, whereas you used to study 14 hours a day, she will bring you to 8 or 9. Thirdly, whereas you were wont to forbear one meal a day at least for your studies, she will bring you to your meat. If these be not mischief enough to affright you, I know not what you are.”
Alleine took his B.A. degree in 1653 and was made a College Tutor soon afterward. He proved a gifted teacher and would have been elected a Fellow had not a College Chaplaincy fallen vacant. This was the lesser position but Alleine decided to take it since as a College Chaplain he would have some pastoral ministry among the students and would conduct prayers in the Chapel.
Already, too, he was beginning to show a zeal for the salvation of the lost which was to be so outstanding in his later ministry. Like Dr. Staunton, he visited the poor and sick in and around Oxford doing what he could to relieve their wants as well as to preach the gospel to them. He also anticipated George Whitefield and the Wesley brothers by visiting Oxford jail regularly to preach to the prisoners, despite the danger of disease.
But, full as his days were, Alleine was not yet settled in his life work. His desire was still for a pastoral ministry and in August, 1654, he visited his father’s cousin, Richard Alleine, the greatly loved Puritan Rector of Batcombe in Somerset, to ask his advice. While there he also met Richard Alleine’s daughter, Theodosia, and thereafter he had no plans for his future that did not include Theodosia too.
Richard Alleine was a convinced Presbyterian and held high views of the calling and office of a minister. He was impressed by his grave young cousin’s evident godliness. But still he was only twenty-one and Richard Alleine was not going to use his influence precipitately on his behalf, nor did he hold out hopes to the young couple of an early marriage. Joseph accordingly returned to Oxford in an unsettled frame of mind, and he had not long been back when a very tempting offer was made to him. Under the Commonwealth and Protectorate, there were good opportunities for able and personable young Christian men, and Alleine had come to the notice of certain senior members of the University, who had made his name known in influential circles. The result was that he was offered “a very honourable preferment” with excellent financial and other prospects. For several days Alleine wavered. He wanted to be settled and in a position to marry Theodosia, but his heart was not at rest and finally he refused the offer. Writing afterward to Theodosia he relates his feelings: “Though I am apt to be unsettled and quickly set off the hinges yet methinks I am like a bird out of the nest, I am never quiet till I am in my old way of communion with God, like the needle in the compass that is restless till it be turned towards the Pole.”
Alleine’s letter to Theodosia was written in a mood of bitter self-criticism that he should have allowed material temptation to unsettle him. There was in it an element of excess which was to become more balanced with later maturity, but it does bring to us the intensity of this young man’s longings after God and hatred of anything in himself that came between:
How long shall I spend my days in wishing and desiring, when my glorified brethren spend theirs in rejoicing and enjoying? . . . How cautious must I be to keep me from danger, how apt am I to be troubled with the cares and fears of this life, molesting myself with the thoughts of what I shall eat, and what I shall put on and wherewithal I shall provide for myself and mine, when your souls are taken up with nothing but God and Christ, and ’til your work to be still contemplating and admiring that love that redeemed you from all this. . . . Oh! when shall I come and appear before Him? Alas, what do I here? This is not my resting place. My treasure is in Heaven, and my heart is in Heaven. Oh, when shall I be where my heart is?
There is no mistaking the passion of such an outpouring. Alleine’s was a temperament that knew no half-measures, and gripped and moved by the realities of the spiritual realm, “he was,” according to an Oxford contemporary, “like fire, warming, refreshing, quickening.”
The following spring of 1655 Alleine received another offer much more to his liking. It came from the Vicar of Taunton, an old friend of Richard Alleine, who wanted an assistant minister. The only thing against the offer was that it promised very little money and, in fact, Alleine’s income was never to exceed £80 a year and for much of the time it was only half that sum. Having thought it over, Alleine wrote to Theodosia at some length and in his letters sets out clearly the principles on which he decided his life’s ministry. Briefly they are as follows:
1. A man’s life consists not in the abundance of the things that he possesses, and where a man has least material goods, he may be more cast upon God’s faithfulness and become more truly dependent upon Him.
2. In making a decision, they should not first ask: What is it worth a year? Is the maintenance certain? And what is the cost of living there? These things must be considered, but they need first to think: What good am I like to do? What good am I like to get?
3. If they seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and leave other things to Him, they shall not lack.
4. What is wanting in the means, God will make up in the blessing. Writes Alleine: “This I take for certain truth, while a man commits himself and his affairs to God and is in a way that God put him into, now if he have but little income, if he have a great blessing, that’s enough to make it up. Let others take their course and we will take ours, to wait upon God by faith and prayer and rest in His promise; and I am confident that is the way to be provided for.”
Alleine had made up his mind that he would not accept any offer without Theodosia’s free consent, but having received this, he accepted the post of Assistant Minister at the Parish Church of St. Mary Magdalene, Taunton, and took up his appointment in the summer of 1655.
Alleine as a Minister
At the outset of his ministry Joseph Alleine was ordained at a meeting of the Presbyterian Classical Assembly held at Taunton.
This highlights the curious religious situation existing during the Protectorate. The Prayer Book service was banned by law. The Westminster Assembly’s Directory for Worship had come into use in 1645 and a Parliamentary ordinance of 1648 had, in theory at least, instituted Presbyterian Church order and government throughout the nation. But the rise of a powerful Independency since then had put an end to that in practice, and it was only ever partially instituted. Under Cromwell an established Church was maintained. Clergy who insisted upon the Prayer Book were removed, as were certain others whose life and conduct were deemed unfit for ministers of the gospel. But no enquiry was made as to whether ministers within the Established Church were Presbyterians or Independents (which included Baptists) provided they satisfied the Commission of Triers that they were orthodox in doctrine and fit persons to be ministers.
Toleration was not confined within the Established Church, and some Independents and Baptists ministered in “gathered” churches outside it. As for the Quakers and extreme sectarians, while they obeyed the laws of the land and allowed others to worship freely (the Quakers were continually getting into trouble for not doing this), they came within Cromwell’s comprehensive policy of toleration. In fact, whereas hitherto (and again in future) when religious problems arose, the question for the State was when and how it should enforce by law a uniformity of church worship and discipline, under Cromwell the position was reversed and for the first time the law was used to enforce toleration.
This does not mean that there were no religious problems under the Protectorate. With the rise of many vociferous sects and with the strong passions of the time, there were. But in Taunton during these years, there were less religious troubles than in many places. This was largely due to George Newton, the Vicar of St. Mary Magdalen, and his assistant, Alleine.
Newton, who had been Vicar since 1631, was a staunch Puritan, outspoken during Laudian days and of considerable influence in the town. As a Presbyterian he had been one of six signatories of a strongly worded petition to Parliament for the setting up of Presbyterianism throughout Somerset, which design was only ever partially implemented. But he was a man of temperate spirit, and spoke out against bitterness and factions wherever he saw them. By the time Alleine came to assist him he was elderly and had bad health. He was also much involved with affairs in the town. The congregation at St. Mary Magdalen was large, including many of the prominent families in the town and neighborhood; and the parish took in most of the town. After Alleine had been ordained and had received a certificate from the Triers, Newton shared the preaching and administration of all ordinances jointly with his young assistant, and as time went on left the bulk of pastoral work to him.
Alleine thus had a heavy responsibility for a young man in his early twenties. For the next seven years he was to minister within the established Church with outstanding success, but we shall only look briefly at this period in order that we may consider more thoroughly the years of Alleine’s nonconformity. In any case, though the outward circumstances of the two periods differed drastically, Alleine’s ministry was in fact consistent throughout.
1. First, we note the seriousness with which Alleine regarded his call to the ministry and his ordination. This, he believed, was binding. To those who laid hands upon him, he wrote years later reminding them that they had then “made us publicly promise that we would never from fear of any persecution, desist from preaching the gospel.” And writing to his people from prison years later he reminds them of his ordination and how “I told you in the close of what I spake before the laying on of the holy hands upon me—‘most gladly do I take up this office with all the persecution, affliction, difficulties, and tribulation and inconveniences that do and may attend it,’ and blessed be God I am through His goodness of the same mind still.”
2. The supreme object of Alleine’s ministry was never in doubt. It was to preach Christ—to lead people to a vital, saving knowledge of Him—and to teach and build them up to live to His praise and to the glory of God. His constant plea, reiterated in various forms over and over again, was simply this: “Brethren, I preach not myself, but the Lord Jesus Christ and myself your servant for Jesus’ sake. Give him your hearts and I have my errand. I am but the friend of the Bridegroom and my business is but to give you to understand His love and to join your hearts unto Him.”
3. It was this great object that led Alleine to a life of extraordinary zeal, as with all the ardency of his nature he sought to lead others to a vital knowledge of the Lord and to spend himself to the glory of God.
Such a desire to use himself fully in the Lord’s service caused him and his wife—a true partner for him—to move from the vicarage, where they lived for a while with George Newton after their marriage, to a home of their own. They were childless, and his wife recounts: “We took a house and I having been always bred to work, undertook to teach at school, and had many tablers and scholars, our family being seldom less than 20 and many times 30, my school usually 50 or 60.” Under the spiritual direction of Alleine, who loved children and was always concerned for them, it seems that many in their school and home were truly converted.
In spite of the demands of such a household, Alleine did not neglect his own soul or his pastoral ministry. The self-discipline begun at Oxford was continued, and whatever he might say about getting up later, his wife assures us that he was much troubled if ever he heard any tradesmen at work before he was up and at prayer, and would say, “O how this noise shames me! Doth not my master deserve more than theirs.” It was his constant practice to begin the day with four hours given to prayer and meditation, before calling his household for family worship. He studied every morning, and after dinner visited on five afternoons a week, catechized at the Free School every Saturday morning, took one or two midweek evening meetings at St. Mary Magdalen, and for the rest went out preaching in the villages as often as he could.
Even at this stage in his life, when the religious scene was encouraging, Alleine lived with a sense of urgency, and when his wife expostulated with him for working so hard and wished to see more of him, he said: “Ah my dear, I know your soul is safe, but how many more that are perishing have I to look after. O that I could do more for them.” “Value precious time,” he would say, “while time doth last and not when it is irrevocably lost.” “Our Saviour made religion His business (Luke 2:49) and how busy was He! . . . He went up and down doing good—and what put Him upon this earnest diligence? The sense of the shortness of His time (John 9:4).”
Alleine was not however simply an activist who lived upon his activities. Ardent—passionate—yes—but throughout his life and in his writings there runs a streak of Christian mysticism—a mysticism that was Christ-centered and biblically oriented—that longed to know more and deeper communion with God. Newton, who knew him better than most, observed acutely enough that “had not his zeal for God’s glory and the salvation of souls engaged him so much to an active life he could even have lived wholly in divine contemplation.” The mainspring of his labors in fact was not a liking to be active, but a sense of divine realities. “Love is a busy grace,” he once observed, and he advised his people: “Often think with yourselves, what a reasonable thing it is that you should with all you have serve the Lord. Shall not the servant trade for His master with whose goods he is entrusted? Is it not for Him that you fetch every breath?”
It was Alleine’s firm conviction that a minister’s first duty—and greatest privilege—was to preach the gospel and to expound the Scriptures among those to whom he was called to labor. “Lord!” he exclaims, “how unworthy am I, everlastingly unworthy of this glorious dignity.” This conviction explains why he gave all his time, energies, and gifts so unstintingly to his pastoral ministry, among ordinary country folk, and apart from one treatise on natural theology, written in Latin and so far as I know unpublished, wrote nothing that did not spring directly from a pastoral context.
With regard to his evangelism, we are told that he was “infinitely and insatiably greedy for the conversion of souls.” We shall find plenty of evidence for this later; meanwhile Baxter’s opinion is of some interest, in that he believed that Alleine’s fervent thirst for souls was a means, under God, of his great success, since—Baxter observes—“be men’s parts never so great, I seldom have known any man do much good, that was not earnestly desirous to do good. If he longs not for men’s conversion, he is seldom the means of converting many. For there is a certain lively seriousness necessary in all our studies, to make our sermons suitable to their ends, and in all our preaching to make them fit to reach men’s hearts, without which they are as a blunted knife. . . . And though God can work miracles, and therefore can work without means, yet that is not His ordinary way.”
Certainly Alleine’s preaching was characterized by fervent desire to present his message—and above all his Lord—in a manner that would reach the people. In order to do this he deliberately avoided academic forms and literary style, making use of his intellectual training and natural gifts indirectly rather than directly. That is, he expounded his doctrine and prepared his sermons with carefully ordered sequence of thought, and used his ability in debate for holding up all possible objections—and then answering them in plain, forthright—sometimes pithy—language that went straight home to his people. And not to their heads only. He applied what he said closely and with a passion that made people feel he was ready to give his very life for his convictions. And, in fact, time and again the power of the doctrines so took hold of him as he preached that he would be carried away from his argument for a while, lost in praise and wonder—only to return and plead with renewed urgency for his people to give themselves wholly to such a God and Savior.
We get some idea of how Alleine taught his people to set out upon their Christian lives from an outline form of covenanting with God which he prepared and which was so widely used that Richard Alleine included it in part 1 of his Vindiciae Pietatis.3 Alleine advised people to enter into solemn written Covenant with God after their conversion—not as a necessity but because he believed, from his own experience, that it helped them to remember their high calling and strengthened them against temptation. Before doing so, however, he asked them to set time apart to consider all the terms of God’s covenant and to search their own hearts. Then, “in the most solemn manner possible, as if the Lord were visibly present before their eyes” they were to open their hearts to the Lord, acknowledging their own hopelessness and trusting only in Jesus Christ and His merits. That done, they should solemnly covenant—in writing—not to allow any known sin, and sincerely to desire grace to forsake all that is dear in the world rather than to follow sin. The vows which follow include: “I do here take Thee the Lord Jehovah, Father, Son and Holy Ghost for my portion and chief good: and to give up myself, body and soul, for Thy service, promising and vowing to serve Thee in holiness and righteousness all the days of my life. . . . I renounce mine own worthiness and do here avow Thee for the Lord my Righteousness. I renounce mine own wisdom and do here take Thee for mine only Guide. I renounce mine own will and take Thy will for my Law.”
The main emphasis of Alleine’s teaching ministry was always the same. It was firstly, through exposition of Scripture, to direct men and women to a deeper and more realized knowledge of God and the Lord Jesus Christ—in heart as well as head—and from this to exhort them to live worthy of their calling and to thirst after holiness. Hear him as he preaches:
Labour that Holiness may become your nature and religion your business. . . . Brethren, let God’s work be done by you, not by the by, but as your greatest business. Confine not religion to your knees, but carry on an even-spun thread of holiness through your whole course. It is the disgrace of religion that Christians are so unlike themselves unless it be when they are in holy duties. This wounds religion to the quick, when it shall be said of professors, these men indeed will pray like Angels, but for aught we can see, they are as peevish as other men, and as hard in their dealings, and make as little conscience of their words as others do. Beloved, do not think religion lies only, or chiefly, in prayer, hearing or reading, for you must be throughout religious. . . . Herein consist the excellency and the difficulty of religion, when you have the baits of intemperance before you, then to hold the reins hard and deny your flesh; when you have provocation before you, then to bite in your passions and bridle your unruly member; when you have dealings with others then to do unto them as you would have them do in like case to you. In this I say lies the excellence of religion.
He was under no illusions that this was easily achieved and called for daily self-examination which, he declared, “will make you live holily and die comfortably; but if you let things run long, you will be all at a loss.” Alleine believed this to be so important that when he was later imprisoned he wrote out detailed questions for his people from which we see that he endeavored to promote holy living in every part of his people’s life, and indeed his own declared aim for himself was: “That not only my praying, preaching, alms, etc. . . . but even my eating, drinking, sleeping, visits, discourses, may all be done as unto God.”
He emphasized the importance of family worship and catechizing, and his tract on family godliness instructs heads of families in great detail as to their duty and exhorts them to “Let religion be in your families not as a matter by the by (to be minded at your leisure, when the world will give you leave) but the standing business of the house. Settle it upon your hearts that your souls are bound up with the souls of your family. They are committed unto you and if they be lost through your neglect, they will be required at your hands.”
One of the most important features of his pastoral ministry was the use he made of catechizing, publicly in the church, and privately in families in the course of his visiting. Pastoral visitation had not been practiced in Taunton, or in the district around, for many years. This made it hard going to begin with, but undaunted Alleine went regularly from door to door through every street in the parish. His method was to send a courteous note beforehand to say he was coming. When he arrived he would gather the household together and, according to their need, would teach and explain from the Westminster Assembly Catechism. So great was his success that other ministers began to think seriously of doing the same. In spite of his youth, Alleine was already looked on as one of their leaders, and at a Classical Association meeting it was decided to ask him to write some guiding principles on the practice of catechizing. From those which he prepared, we learn Alleine’s own principles in the work. He assumed it to be “the unquestionable duty of all the ministers of the Church of Christ to take heed to all the flock God has made them overseers of and to teach not only publicly but from house to house.” They should try to do this in a way that is both pleasing to God and profitable for the people. Their manner should be with compassion, prudence, courtesy, patience, “being gentle to all men and bearing with rudeness and dullness,” “with plainness, not betraying their souls to Hell for want of closeness in our dealing with them.” Alleine advised the ministers to enquire into the people’s knowledge; into their daily living; and into their spiritual states. Finally, he said, they should always leave people with some particular spiritual teaching and help, “often repeating these till they remember.”
It is obvious that the whole bent of Alleine’s ministry was pastoral rather than polemical, and for some time after the Restoration in 1660, he continued his day-to-day ministry, taking little part in the religious controversies that were developing once more. Like other moderate Presbyterians he desired terms that would allow for comprehension within the Established Church. With his pastoral heart he was concerned for the people entrusted to his care and what would happen to them if he left them, and determined that he would not allow himself to separate for small or dubious matters. As weary months of cat-and-mouse negotiations and debates went on in London between Bishops and Presbyterians, Alleine, like many others, knew long hours of perplexity and heart-searching and prayer. But when at last the terms of the Uniformity Act were known, his perplexity ended. On seeing the clauses demanding unfeigned assent and consent to everything in the revised Prayer Book, the demand for reordination at episcopal hands, and the demand to renounce the Covenant, it was plain to him that he could not conform. On August 24, 1662, he therefore publicly bade farewell in the church to a sorrowing people.
Alleine as a Nonconformist
The problems and perplexities of those ministers who refused subscription to the Act of Uniformity did not end with their ejection, and during the next months men all over the country had to decide what to do next.
It has already been mentioned that seventy-three ministers were ejected from Somerset alone, and these included George Newton and the Vicar of Taunton’s other parish church. Where conforming clergy were put into the livings of silenced ministers, they often failed to preach biblically or to live in a godly manner. But by no means all the vacant livings were filled at once, and at Alleine’s trial, nine months later, it was stated that no minister had been settled in Taunton “for three-quarters of a year together, nor any service of God at all in the public congregation for very many weeks successively.”
Thus Alleine and his brother ministers were in the heart-rending position of seeing their people either without any shepherd at all, or in the care of those who gave the impression of being but hirelings. On the other hand most of the ejected ministers, like Alleine, were poor men without private means and with family responsibilities. They had already given up their means of livelihood and their homes. Now, since the Act clearly forbade them to preach, should they not obey the magistrate as Scripture commanded and keep silent?
Initially the great majority of ejected Somerset ministers ceased from preaching altogether and from carrying on any pastoral ministry. It is clear, however, that Alleine had thought through the issues involved even before St. Bartholomew’s Day and was already firmly persuaded that the ejection of ministers did not absolve them from preaching the gospel. He was therefore resolved to go on preaching (though not in a church) until he was sent to prison or banished, and typically enough, he lost no time in putting his resolution into effect. His wife loyally supported him, though we may imagine the cost that lay behind her brief statement, “at which time we sold off all our goods, preparing for gaol or banishment, where he was desirous I should attend him, as I was willing to do, it always having been more grievous to me to think of being absent from him than to suffer with him.”
Alleine states the reasons and principles behind his decision in a pamphlet—A Call to Archippus4—which he wrote from prison the following year, to persuade his brother ministers to follow the same course. It is written courteously, and in Alleine’s form of addressing the ministers as “Fathers and Brethren,” we have a reminder of his youth—he was still not thirty. In it he emphasizes preaching as the minister’s first duty, and exhorts silent ministers to reexamine themselves and their commission in the light of such Scriptures as Colossians 4:17; Acts 4:29; Acts 20:23 and following; 1 Timothy 4:16 and 5:21; 2 Timothy 2:3, 4, 5 and 4:1–2; Luke 9:62; Proverbs 29:18; Philippians 1:17; Hebrews 12:3; Nehemiah 4:11; 2 Corinthians 6:4–7.
Alleine’s clear-sighted grasp, even at this early date when the position was still confused, of what would happen if a sound teaching ministry was withheld from the people, is revealed by the questions which he proceeds to put to the ministers. The main thrust of these is as follows:
1. Do they in their hearts think that the present ministry will keep up the power of godliness? “O that we could charitably believe it! But who can deny their senses!”
2. Are they sensible of the famine in the land? “If you are sensible of the famine, surely the voice of God to a withholding minister is like Lamentations 2:19 ‘Arise, cry out in the night: . . . pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord: lift up thy hands toward Him for the life of thy young children, that faint for hunger.”
3. Will it not impair the honor of their profession if the people show more courage and resolution than their leaders?
4. Will not a great part of their people be in danger of running to extreme sects, which are still active, if their own ministers sit still?
5. Did they have their commission, office, and authority from the magistrate, and is their power in, and relation to, the Church of a civil stamp? He writes, “We know the Magistrate doth not pretend to this; and if none but Christ did, nor could commissionate you, can any but He discharge you? Or can the relation between the Church and you (if divine and spiritual) cease upon this inter-position of a power merely political? If the Magistrate did not constitute and cause this Relation how can he make it to cease?”
Alleine recognized that this was so much at the heart of the issue that he goes into possible objections in depth. To the argument that they are prohibited from preaching by the magistrates, his reply is that this was the apostles’ case over and over again: “Why should we not answer with them ‘It is better to obey God than man?’ Are not God’s forbidden messengers yet charged by Him to speak without fear (Acts 5:20)?” But it could be argued that if the apostles had not continued, all preaching would have ceased, whereas the same was not true of the present time. To this Alleine retorts: “If we have a ministry that does not do the work of a ministry, converting and edifying—how little better we are than if we had none.”
He then goes on to deal with another type of object, namely that if ministers set up in private and draw people from the established churches, it will be a great cause of separation. “The separation be upon others,” declares Alleine, “who when we were quietly settled in the administration of Church ordinances, in a more pure and reformed sort, are come in upon us and have possessed our places and pulpits. We continue still but in the same station, and the same work, watching over our flocks, only the place is altered . . . ;” and further “The most commendable endeavours after Christian unity must be conjunct with a study of gospel purity and the power of godliness.”
Having dealt at considerable length with such arguments and objections, Alleine comes to the conclusion that many of these are, in truth, so many excuses to mask the real cause of the ministers’ silent fear of persecution. His method of dealing with this is to point them to the Lord Himself and to the Word of God: “Brethren, hath Christ suffered for us, and have we such a cloud of martyrs, and shall we shift off our work for fear of persecution? Let us humbly request you but to view the encouraging promises that Christ has made to sufferers for His Name. Are not these the very things which we have over and over preached and pressed on our people? And shall we make them believe by our flinching? . . . Are these things true, or are they not? If not, why have we taught them? If they be, why do we not live up to them?”
Alleine’s words, however searching, were the more acceptable in that all to whom he addressed himself knew that he was not urging others out of mere intellectual apprehension of truths, but was speaking out of those convictions which, while based on scriptural study, had already been applied in his own life and experience.
One further group of arguments which Alleine used to the ministers underlines his own involvement in the situation. These concerned existing opportunities. At the time of his ejectment, Alleine had asked God to allow him three months freedom, to establish and encourage his people, before he went to prison. In the event, he was given nine months. During that time he not only taught his own congregation in Taunton, preaching from house to house but also rode out among the villages to congregations whose ministers had left them. Indeed nothing demonstrates more plainly the primary importance which Alleine attached to preaching than the fact that at this time, when expecting arrest daily, he put aside all his usual studies to give himself wholly to preaching. This he did some fourteen times a week, and despite the strain of the circumstances, was able to testify that he had never before known such supplies of God’s grace or preached with such power and freedom. Others have recorded the signal blessing upon his ministry in those months when hundreds flocked to hear him.
It was out of such experience that Alleine could say to the silent ministers, “Never had you such an open and effectual door for the doing good to souls, whether for conversion or edification. Now the hearts of the people cleave to you more than ever, if you lose them not by your own neglect. Now they see the difference between the hay and stubble of the present materials and the gold and silver that you did build with. . . . How hungry are their souls, how do they hang upon your lips, how far will they travel, how early will they rise, how hard will they venture (glory be to God, we speak what we know). Verily the field is even white to the harvest.”
Alleine’s freedom inevitably came to an end. He was arrested on May 26, 1663, on a charge of illegal preaching and being present at a riotous assembly, and sent to Ilchester Prison. His arrival at the prison was typical of the man. On being told that the jailer was out and that he must wait, Alleine made such good use of his time that when the jailer at last returned he was infuriated to find his prisoner preaching from the prisons steps to some 200 people.
Ilchester had an evil reputation for typhus—and flooding from the nearby river. Alleine was spared the latter danger, however, as the room into which he was thrust was at the top of the building immediately beneath the roof which sloped so low that when the prisoners lay in bed they could reach up and touch the tiles. These retained their heat long after sunset, and even though the prisoners removed panes from the windows to let some fresh air in, it was still hot and breathless. For, at the time of Alleine’s arrival, there were already more than seventy people occupying the room.
He spent two months in prison before coming up at the Sessions. There the charges against him were not proved, but instead of being acquitted he was returned to jail to await the August Assizes. The mockery of a trial which was eventually held in Taunton Castle is recounted in full, with notes in the handwriting of Alleine’s counsel, in a manuscript later found among Richard Baxter’s papers. Apart from revealing the role of paid informers and the near panic of the authorities who saw plots against the Crown in every meeting, the main points of interest for us are Alleine’s defense of the validity of his office of minister, and his determination to give no pledge that might prevent him from preaching in the future even though failure to do this should cause him to remain in prison. The transcript brings before us the scene in the Assize Hall with a robed judge on the bench and Alleine at the Bar.
Judge: When were you made a minister?
Alleine: Eight years since.
Judge: By whom?
Alleine: By the Presbytery.
Judge: Who gave them power to ordain?
Alleine: My Lord, they have that power by virtue of their office as they are ministers of Christ.
Judge: Your ordination is nothing worth. You are no minister.
Alleine: My Lord, I hope you will not assert that which shall overthrow all the ministry of the whole Christian Protestant world, except here in England, for your Lordship is not ignorant that they have no other ordination than by the hands of the Presbytery, just as I have.
The result of the trial was a foregone conclusion. Alleine was found guilty and returned to prison for a year, all but three days.
It was certainly not a wasted year, and so great were the pressures on his time that Alleine had to get up even before 4 a.m. to ensure time for prayer and meditation. His days were spent seeing a continual stream of visitors who were allowed in—or not—according to the jailer’s whim. He took over preaching to the felons in the prison, and when after several months he was moved to an annex in the town, he was—strangely enough—allowed to hold meetings on Sundays and in the week when hundreds attended. His pastoral heart was also concerned about the children and young people in the neighborhood, and he had tracts distributed to teach them the basic doctrines of Scripture. Added to all this were his writings. First and foremost Alleine was always a pastor, and his main concern in prison was not for himself but for the people whom he had left behind in Taunton and elsewhere. What would become of them now that he was no longer there to strengthen and encourage? At any time they might have to suffer worse persecution. Would they stand?
These were the thoughts that led Alleine to write not only A Call To Archippus, but several practical helps for his people. One of these was the “Synopsis of the Covenant,” which was later inserted in Heaven Opened, the third part of Richard Alleine’s Vindiciae Pietatis. It is recorded that, in the next century, James Harvey came upon this synopsis shortly before he died and said, “it was the richest piece he ever read in his life.”
Certainly the synopsis brings out, perhaps more vividly than in anything else he wrote, the essential characteristics of Alleine—passionate feeling and a lyrical quality that takes fire as he contemplates divine truth, allied to a mind submitted to and with a clear grasp of Scripture foundations and an ability to choose and present his material.
In this synopsis Alleine gathers up the rich provisions of God for the believer, and presents them dramatically. First, the Voice of the Herald prepares the Way. This prologue reaches its climax when the Voice of the Lord is heard—“Hear, O ye ends of the earth, the mighty God, the Lord hath spoken. . . . Behold, I establish my Covenant between me and you. By my holiness have I sworn. . . .” And then follow an array of glorious promises from the Scriptures, in rich profusion yet harmoniously arranged in an ordered sequence which extends over the whole range of the believer’s relationship with God and covers his every need.
This then was Alleine’s way of practical encouragement to his suffering, persecuted people. He did not commiserate with them or relate his own even worse plight. Rather, he lifted their eyes heavenward away from their own weakness and confused circumstances to the almighty strength and faithfulness of God. Can we imagine the impact upon people left without leaders and in the midst of dangers and suffering when confronted by page after page of such glowing passage as this:
Behold, O ye sons of men! Behold and wonder. Be astonished O Heavens! . . . This day do I by covenant bestow myself upon my servants. I will be your God. Nothing in the world is so much your own as I. The houses that you have built, that you have bought are not so much yours as I am. Here you are tenants at will, but I am your eternal inheritance. . . . I will be all to you that you can wish. I will be a friend to you. My secrets shall be with you and you shall have all the freedom of access to me and liberty to pour out all your hearts into my bosom. . . . I will be a Physician to you. I will heal your backslidings and cure all your diseases. . . . I will be a Shepherd to you. Be not afraid of evil tidings, for I am with you. . . . You shall not want, for I will feed you. . . . The keeper of Israel never slumbers—I will guide you with mine eye. . . . I will be a Sovereign to you. Fear not the unrighteousness of men, I will judge your cause. . . . let them curse, I will bless. . . . I will be a Husband to you. In loving kindness and in mercies will I betroth you unto me for ever. . . . I will be an everlasting portion to you.
And on and on it goes. Is it any wonder that Alleine was himself carried away as, finally, he represents the believer’s triumph in God’s covenant: “O happy soul, how rich art thou! What a booty have I gotten! O what can I wish more! How full a charter is here! . . . Bless the Lord, O my soul. O had I the tongues of men and angels, all were too little to utter my Creator’s praises.”
But Alleine was too good a pastor only to point his flock to God, without teaching them to work out their high calling in their daily living. While in prison he therefore wrote a detailed explanation of the Assembly’s Catechism—question by question—which he particularly intended for use by heads of families.5 He wrote out, too, the list of Rules for Daily Examination, to which I have already referred and had them distributed to everyone to whom he had ministered. Most important of all and most far-reaching in their influence, he wrote letters to the people who were so much on his heart. For, if he might not preach personally to them, he could at least send them a weekly sermon in letter form. And in fact, these letters reveal Alleine the preacher more plainly than his existing sermon notes, for in these letters he was not writing material to preach from, but was preaching as he wrote, and the whole man is involved—mind and heart. It is indeed this quality of warmth and feeling, allied to his teaching, that kindled the hearts of men and women long after Alleine’s death. For they were printed and reprinted more than once before the close of the century,6 and in the eighteenth century, when among others John Wesley reprinted them four times, and in the nineteenth century abridgments and versions were printed.
The basic emphasis of the letters is consistent with the rest of Alleine’s ministry, as he recognized himself: “The prison sounds forth to you the same doctrine that the pulpit ever did,” he writes. Moreover they reflect that note of immediate concern for the souls of men and women that runs through all that he did. He sums it up himself: “My heart’s desire and prayer for you is that you may be saved. This is that which I have been praying and studying and preaching for these many years and this is the end of my venturing and suffering and writing at the present time. . . . Do not wonder why I follow you so pressingly, why I call upon you so frequently: let not my importunity be grievous to you. . . . Christ did not bethink His blood, and shall I bethink my breath or ink too dear in order to your salvation?”
Although the detailed message and application of the letters vary, Alleine’s method is constant. Here as elsewhere, he does not launch straight into a discussion of contemporary issues, but rather urges his people to look at these in a true prospective by presenting the doctrines of God and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ in redemption and then exhorting believers to view all their problems in the light of these.
Over and over again he urges believers to meditate upon who God is and what the Lord has done as a way of stirring themselves up to live worthily: “Live daily in the praises of your Redeemer,” he writes, “be much in admiring God and studying the worthiness, excellency, and glory of His attributes. Let your souls be much taken up in contemplating and commending His glorious perfection and blessing yourself in the goodly portion you have in Him. Live like those that have a God—and then be disconsolate if you can.”
And again—the same note: “O the provision God hath made for your continual joy and comfort. Dear brethren, do but understand your own blessedness, happy men that you are if you did but know and consider it. Who would count himself poor and miserable that hath all the fulness of the Godhead for his. Sound in this deep—can you find any bottom? Tell me the longitude and latitude of the infinite goodness and mercy of the eternal deity. If you can do this, you may grasp at your own happiness. Oh Christians, live like yourselves, live worthy of your portion, of your privilege and your glorious prerogatives!”
Alleine never leaves his exhortations in general terms. Throughout the letters his application is close and searching. He is particularly concerned that none shall rest in a false peace, and presses them to make sure of their position and “to look to it that you build upon the Rock, that you be sure in the foundation work. . . . ” “Brethren,” he writes, “I see great trials coming, when we shall see professors fall like leaves in the autumn, unless they be well settled.” “Let none of you conclude that because you are of the suffering party, therefore all is well. Look to the foundation, that your hearts be soundly taken off from every sin and set upon God. . . .” “You must every one of you stand shortly before the judgment seat of Christ and be tried for your lives. O try yourselves first. ’Tis easy to mistake education for regeneration, and common conviction and illumination for conversion, and a partial reformation and external obedience for true sanctification. Therefore I beseech you to examine whether you are in the faith. Prove your own selves.”
In order to help them to examine themselves Alleine attempts in the course of the letters to strip away every false prop or deceit that may be keeping people from resting in faith solely upon the finished work of Christ in redemption. He does not stop at pointing out blatant sins, but exhorts people to “examine not only what is done but whence ’tis done, look to the root as well as to the fruit. Eye not only your actions but your aims.” His great fear is lest any should stop short at outward profession, and he reminds them again and again “That godliness is a heart work, it goes deep and spreads far.” It may be that in his comprehensive tests for the people to examine themselves by, Alleine tends at times to give an impression that their salvation itself is dependent upon a high degree of sanctification. Let me quote one example:
If you will be put out of doubt whether you are His sheep or not, you must try it by this certain mark that Christ sets upon all His sheep, even your sanctification. You that will stand to this trial, answer me truly and deliberately to these questions. Do you hate every sin as the sheep doth the mire? Do you regard no iniquity in your hearts? Do you abstain from sin out of fear or out of dislike? Is there not some practice that you are not willing to know is a sin for fear you should be forced to leave it? Do you love the commandment that forbids your sin? Again, how do you stand affected towards holiness? Do you love it? Do you hunger and thirst after it, and desire it more than any temporal good? Do you choose holiness, not out of bare necessity because you cannot go to Heaven without it, but out of love to it and from a deep sense that you have of the surpassing excellency and loveliness and beauty of it? If it is thus with you, you are the persons that the Lord Jesus Christ hath marked for His sheep.
I do not think that Alleine was here or in other such passages intending to belittle the doctrine of justification. There is much in his teaching on justification by faith alone. But he was fearful of antinomianism and of false peace. We have to remember too the circumstances in which he wrote. He was in prison—shut away from his beloved flock, yet longing ardently that they should be kept from the temptations which he well knew would assail them in such times: longing too that they should press on in holiness rather than relapse into that lukewarmness for which Alleine’s temperament had little sympathy at the best of times, and still less at present. “Away with this lukewarm profession,” he writes from his prison. “Away with this heartless, listless, lifeless religion. As good not at all, as not to purpose. Never dream that lazy wishes and idle complaints and key-cold prayers will carry it. O quicken yourselves, call up all your powers, and put you every man his strength to this rope.”
In many of his letters he encourages people to meet often together in order to stir one another up, and he implores heads of families to keep up regular worship and catechizing in their households. “Be so much the more vigorous in your families, by how much the more you are deprived of your public helps. Christians, be advised by me, and let Satan be disappointed in this design. He thinks to break the Church of Christ. Oh but now let every family be a Church.” Let them all, he urges, make sure that they are living the whole of their lives, in every aspect unto God. And let them serve one another. For with Alleine there was never any danger that piety would become ingrowing: “Piety without charity,” he told his people, “is but half of Christianity or rather impious hypocrisy.” “Serve your generation with your might while you have time. You have but a very little time to bring God any glory here, or to do your friends any good; now up and be doing. What! But one cast for eternity and will you not be careful to throw that well?”
Alleine hardly refers in the letters to his own suffering and then only to praise God for His mercies in and through them. “I am fully satisfied,” he writes a month after being returned to prison from the Assizes, “in my Father’s good pleasure. . . . Verily, all is true that I have told you of the all-sufficiency of God, of the fulness of Christ, of the satisfaction of the promises, of the peace, tranquility, content, security that is to be had in a life of faith.”
It was never possible for him to dwell for long upon the Lord Jesus Christ, without his soul being kindled, and in declaring the glories of Christ to his people from the prison we constantly glimpse into his own soul: “O the riches of Christ’s love,” he exclaims at the end of one of the letters, “when shall I end if I suffer my soul to run out its length, and my running pen to enlarge according to the dimensions of this boundless field of divine love.”
“Alas that our souls are so narrow, that the waters are so shallow within. How little, how very little, would our love be if He had it all. And have we any of this little to spare for Him? O that we might love Him with our little all.”
By the time that Alleine was at last released from prison the position of Nonconformists had deteriorated considerably. Government fears of rebellion persisted and paid informers abounded. In May, 1664, the Conventicle Act had been passed, and in future those attending religious meetings—other than in the Established Church—could expect imprisonment or heavy fines.
Notwithstanding all this, no sooner was Alleine back in Taunton again than such numbers came to hear him preach that he soon had to divide his regular hearers into four separate societies and to preach and teach them separately.
At the same time, people from villages for miles around were begging him to come to preach to them, and every week he rode out, despite his own danger—for there were soon warrants out for his arrest again—to as many as he could. We are told that he was now more urgent than ever with the unconverted and that he particularly pressed believers to meet together in companies in order to strengthen one another, “letting the world know they could live comfortably on God alone, on His attributes and promises, though they should have nothing else left.” But that year in prison had taken its toll of Alleine’s health. One day, three months after his release he collapsed after riding sixteen miles to a meeting but insisted on preaching so as not to disappoint the people. He was seriously ill for two months after this, and then, though somewhat recovered from his first illness, he entirely lost the use of his arms for some six months, during which he could neither write nor dress nor feed himself. Yet incredibly enough—and in spite of the doctor’s protestations—he continued preaching all this time throughout the week and twice on Sundays.
Alleine was also concerned in another work. He seems to have seen more clearly than others in that area the vital need to maintain a sound preaching and teaching ministry among the Christians who were left without regular ministers. He was well aware that the times were getting worse, and that the days of opportunity for preaching might be very short. Accordingly, with all his remaining energy he set about organizing his fellow ministers, a number of whom had been persuaded by his arguments to adventure themselves with him. He was the pioneer and leader of this preaching band. It was he who more than any other had gone out among the scattered Christians. He knew who they were and where they might meet, and now he formed these conventicles into regular circuits and encouraged his brethren to form bands of three or four to take oversight of each circuit and to preach according to rota—the biggest conventicles having the greatest number of preachers to visit them. It is of some interest that when in 1672 the Declaration of Indulgence was issued—by which meetings and ministers might be licensed, 178 meetings were licensed that year in Somerset, many of them under the same names and addresses as those which had been gathered under Alleine and held in the darkest persecution.
Besides encouraging ejected ministers, we also have evidence that Alleine was involved and probably the prime mover in at least three ordinations in the worst days of persecution after the passing of the Five Mile Act. The evidence comes from the Rev. George Trosse’s autobiography and a further narrative of his life by Isaac Gilling. Trosse was for years a minister of the gospel in Exeter. He had begun preaching soon after the Restoration and he relates how an ejected minister of Exeter—one of Alleine’s preaching band—urged him to be ordained. Trosse eventually agreed, and he writes: “Hereupon I took a journey to Somerset and there with two more was ordained by five or six able and pious divines. These persons heard our Theses, examined us strictly in some difficult points in divinity and then we delivered our confession of faith and so they proceeded to ordain us. Mr. Joseph Alleine of Taunton was the person who prayed over me at that solemnity.”
An unsolicited testimony to Alleine’s success in gathering ejected ministers around him occurs in a letter, dated July 15, 1665, (and now in the Record Office) from two Deputy Lieutenants for Somerset to the Secretary of State, Lord Arlington. After reporting the arrest of some 120 people at a great conventicle it continues, “My Lord, what causes this letter is that amongst them we took eleven nonconforming ministers who all live in or near about Taunton and there are near as many more in the town who do continually preach up and down. . . . ”
The arrests were in fact made at a house outside Taunton where a number of people had met for a time of Thanksgiving before Alleine set off for Devizes to drink the mineral waters near there for his health’s sake. The upshot was that instead of journeying to Wiltshire, Alleine and his friends spent the next three months in prison at Ilchester. With what spirit he bore this second imprisonment appears from an address he gave to his fellow prisoners on the morning they were due to be released.
1. They were to remember their prison comforts with thankfulness to God and go home praising Him.
2. Their experience should deepen their dependence upon and confidence in God: some of them had gone to prison without the means to pay for their food there, or to maintain their families, yet all had been taken care of.
3. Such mercies should influence their love to God.
4. As a result of what they had learned, they should now learn to love one another the more.
5. And to live strictly knowing that curious eyes would be upon them.
6. They must not revile their persecutors.
7. Nor must they let their acknowledgment of God’s mercies degenerate into proud, vain-glorious boasting or carnal triumph.
8. And another timely warning—They must take care not to load others with censures who had not been to prison. “You know,” declared Alleine, “all are not of the same mind as to the circumstances of suffering, and all have not gone the same way. Far be it from any of you that you should so far forget yourselves as to be unmerciful to your brethren. God forbid that you should increase in censures, instead of increasing in charity.”
9. Lastly he made a plea to the prisoners’ friends: “My desire is to our friends that they will help us in our praises. Our tongues are too little to speak forth the goodness and the grace of God. Love the Lord the better, praise Him the more. . . . O that the praises of God may sound abroad in the country by our means. . . .”
Alleine’s faith, which had enabled him to give praise in trial after trial, was soon put to an even severer test. This came, not from arrest, but illness. His second imprisonment had damaged his health still more, and though he continued preaching for some eighteen months despite the Five Mile Act, at last in 1667 he was persuaded to go to Dorchester, in Dorset, to consult a well-known doctor. Hardly had he arrived when he was taken so acutely ill that he was expected to die. He lost all use of his arms and legs and for several months lay almost lifeless while his wife nursed him day and night, first in a lodging and then in the home of a hospitable believer. At last he began to improve and anxious visitors arrived to see him from Taunton. What struck them most was that he who had been so unceasingly zealous and active in all the years they had known him should now be lying helpless with evident patient contentment. When they commented on this he answered simply: “What, is God my Father, Jesus Christ my Saviour, and the Spirit my sweet friend, my Comforter and sanctifier and Heaven my inheritance; shall I not be content without limbs and hands? Through grace, I am, fully satisfied with my Father’s pleasure.”
Here then in this period of complete helplessness we have confirmation that Alleine was no mere activist, living upon his activities, but his tireless zeal like his patience in suffering sprang from contemplation of divine truth and known, felt communion with God: “My dear friends,” he told his visitors, “I feel the power of those doctrines I preached to you on my heart. . . . I have lived a sweet life by the promises and I hope through grace can die by a promise. It is the promises of God which are everlasting, that will stand by us. Nothing but God in them will stead us in a day of affliction.”
Alleine’s active life was done. At least he was never again able to move about freely—though on his sickbed he was still concerned for his people in and around Taunton, and although he could no longer write himself his wife wrote to them at his dictation. From one of these letters we see how Alleine in his helplessness was still taken up with praising the love of God: “Who in all this earth should admire and commend this love if I should not?” He exclaims from his sickbed: “I feel it, I taste it, the sweet savour thereof reviveth my soul, it is light to mine eyes and life to mine heart; the warm beams of this blessed Sun, O how they have comforted me and ravished and refreshed me in body and soul! And shall not I praise that love and grace that has done all this for me? My heart is enlarged but I told you paper could not hold what I have to speak of the goodness of the all-gracious God in which I live!”
Some improvement in his condition enabled him to be taken back to Taunton in a horse litter early in 1668. Once there, people flocked to visit him, and what little strength he had was spent in counseling and encouraging them. But his condition deteriorated again and in July as a last desperate remedy he was taken again in a horse litter to Bath for the waters there.
Alleine and his wife both knew that he was dying. But in spite of convulsions, weakness, and semi-paralysis Alleine was not idle. A number of his friends were in Bath at the time, including Richard Fairclough—an ejected minister—and John Howe of Torrington. Both testify to the extraordinary effect of Alleine’s presence in the town.
It seems that he was carried daily—he could not walk—to the Bath, and such was his reputation and their awe at his wasted appearance, that the gentry gathered around to hear him—as morning after morning he preached the gospel from the Bath and—we are told—did not spare his application and reproofs to sinners, with the result that a number were converted. As if that were not enough, on his way home each day Alleine got his chairmen to carry him to the various schools, where he spoke to the children and distributed his Explanation of the Catechism. When not visiting the schools, he was carried to visit the poor and widows of Bath, and on these visits gave materially as he was able and told them the way of salvation. Then on Sundays, he and his wife had between sixty and seventy children in their lodging for instruction. Is this the first Sunday School we hear of? He also found time and strength to promote a scheme for catechizing throughout Somerset and Wiltshire, and with a friend printed 6,000 copies of the Assembly’s Catechism at their own cost.
A letter dictated at this time to a very old and dear friend gives us a last insight into his frame of mind and heart:
As to temporals, I have lack of nothing, and as for spirituals I abound and superabound, and the stream of my comforts has been full and running over; the joy of the Lord has been my strength at weakest, and in the multitude of my thoughts within me, His comforts have refreshed my soul. I have found God a satisfying portion to me, and have sat down under His shadow with full delights and His fruit is most sweet to my taste. . . . O my friend, let us exalt His name together. He is my solace in my solitude, He is my standing Comforter, my tried Friend, my sure Refuge; my safe Retreat. He is my paradise, He is my Heaven, and my heart is at rest in Him . . . and whither should I go but unto Him?
Five days later Alleine was with his Lord, and on November 17, 1668, a crowd of many hundreds defied the laws to follow him to his resting place in St. Mary Magdalen Church in Taunton, where today a tablet reads—
“Here Mr. Joseph Alleine lies
To God and you [that is, Taunton] a sacrifice.”
Conclusion
Alleine was thirty-four when he died. As we have seen, the sole of his ministry had been centered in and around Taunton. Yet even in his lifetime, his influence had been felt far more widely. What then were the qualities of this man who was so used of God, and whose writing, particularly the Alarme, has been used to convert and build up so many during the last centuries? He was not a great or prolific writer, and he refused an entrance to influential circles in favor of a pastoral ministry.
Perhaps he is best summed up in that phrase of his Oxford friend who said when Alleine was still a student: “He was like a fire, warming, refreshing, quickening.”
Alleine was of a naturally ardent disposition. What is most striking about him is the way in which, having come to a clear grasp of biblical truth, all the passionate intensity of his being was channeled into his one great aim of living unto God. We have seen that this was no glib phrase to him. There was a totality about his life in which he strove to bring every part into conformity with God’s revealed will and to please Him. And there was an urgency about the way he lived. Some may say that he lived at too great a rate and wore himself out. But at least we may say with certainty that God was pleased to bless and honor his life and ministry in an exceptional way. It is attested by all his contemporaries that the power of the Spirit was upon his preaching. Both his life and his ministry were also marked by a consistency that was independent of outward circumstances. We have seen how these varied—between the encouraging days of his settled ministry, the dark days of persecution and imprisonment, and the long months of helpless suffering. Yet through all these there sounded the same note of lyrical joyfulness and praise—of glorying in a great and holy God and in the love of a known and felt Christ—and a longing to bring others to such knowledge, that led him to give of his utmost for the souls of men, women, and children. Again, perhaps some may question the intimate expressions and experimental emphasis of some of his outbursts—but these sprang from the heart of a man who knew his God, who delighted to meditate upon divine truths, and whose faith rested securely upon biblical foundations.
What would Alleine’s application of his message be for us today? From the consistency of his ministry in the varied circumstances that beset him we may conclude that it would not have changed. May we not hear his voice examine us, in his oft repeated emphasis:
Beloved we lose unutterably for want of considering, for want of viewing our own privileges and blessedness. O man, is Christ thine, and yet dost thou live at a low rate and comfort? Is thy name written in Heaven, and yet dost thou not rejoice? Shall the children of the Kingdom, the candidates of glory, the chosen generation, the royal priesthood, be like other men? O Christians, remember who and whence you are. Consider your obligations. Put on a better pace. Bestir yourselves, run, and wrestle, and be strong for the Lord of Hosts, and earnestly yet peaceably contend for the faith once delivered to the Saints.
Does the example of Alleine’s life not challenge us, as he tells us: “I cannot say I have already attained, but this is that my heart is set to learn, that in all that I do, whether sacred or civil actions, still I may be doing but one work and driving on one design—that God may be pleased by me and glorified in me.”
Finally, we have Alleine’s prayer for the ministry in the dark, confused days at the end of his life. Would it be so different today?
O Thou Shepherd and Bishop of souls, the great and good Shepherd of the sheep, that gavest Thyself for them, that gavest Thy ministry to them, for the perfecting of Thy saints, for the edifying of Thy body, quicken Thy forgetful stewards to look to the pinching wants of Thy distressed family. Awaken Thine under-shepherds. Call up Thy watchmen to watch over Thy flock by night, that the beasts of prey may not devour them. . . . Behold how Thy flock is scattered, and few search or seek after them, so that they become a prey to every beast of the field, because there is no shepherd. . . . O, give us again the men after Thine own heart, and set Thou up shepherds over us, that we fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither be lacking, as Thou hast promised. So we Thy people, and sheep of Thy pasture, will give Thee thanks for ever, and praise Thy name to all generations. O Lord, Thy people say Amen. Let all Thy ministers say Amen. Lord Jesus, say Thou Amen.